A standard procedure for the treatment of obesity and obesity-related diabetes to reduce stomach volume, either surgically or by forming stapled folds or tissue plications within the stomach. Co-owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,020,741, 7,922,062, 7,913,892, 7,909,223, 7,909,222, 7,909,219, and 7,708,821, for example, disclose an endoscopic stapling device that can be inserted into a patient's stomach intraorally, and operated to draw a section of stomach into a fold and staple the fold with a circular array of staples to form a tissue plication within the stomach. Ideally, in order to reduce total stomach volume sufficiently, e.g., to less than half of the original volume, it is necessary to create a number of such plications, typically between about 8 and 15. This requires that the stapling device be removed from the stomach after each plication is formed, reloaded with a fresh array of staples, introduced into the patient's stomach again, and then operated to form a new plication. A stomach-reduction procedure that requires 10 such plications would thus require the physician to insert and remove the stapling device a total of ten times during the entire procedure. This is both time-consuming, and uncomfortable to the patient, and adds to the risk of injuring the patient's stomach as the device is being inserted into the stomach.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a stapler device that can be used by a physician to produce multiple stapled tissue plications without needing to reload the device between successive plications.